Episode 2: End Zone

In Episode 2: End Zone, DDSWTNP do not so much tackle as infringe upon DeLillo’s 1972 novel of “footbawl,” nuclear wargames, and jargon-addled, surprisingly human characters in wasted desert spaces. Topics include race and sports in American culture, football’s dependence on the “word signal,” Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy, and some alternate titles for the novel from DeLillo’s archive. #getfetal #hokethatbickie #theuntellable #lowlyformofamericansainthood

Texts referred to in this episode:

Don DeLillo, “An Interview with Don DeLillo” by Thomas LeClair. Conversations with Don DeLillo, ed. Thomas DePietro. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. 3-15.

Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Ninth Elegy” (Duino Elegies): https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/eng241/rilke.html

“There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates” (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms).